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Vegetarian and vegan diets lead to lower blood levels of cholesterol and fats, according to a major new analysis of all evidence from clinical trials published since 1982. Compared to people eating an omnivorous diet, those following a plant-based diet experienced an average reduction in total cholesterol levels of 7% from levels measured at the start of the studies, a 10% reduction in “bad” LDL cholesterol levels, and a 14% reduction in apoliprotein B, a blood protein used to estimate cholesterol level, the analysis found. Those results showed that plant-based diets can play a significant role in reducing blocked arteries, thereby lowering the risk of stroke and heart attacks, researchers concluded in the review published May 24 in the European Heart Journal. “If people start eating vegetarian or vegan diets from an early age, the potential for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease caused by blocked arteries is substantial,” said researcher Dr. Ruth Frikke-Schmidt, chief physician at the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. “Importantly, we found similar results across continents, ages, different ranges of body mass index, and among people in different states of health,” Frikke-Schmidt said in a journal news release. Vegetarian and vegan diets benefitted people ranging from normal weight to obese, researchers found. For the review, researchers analyzed data from 30 clinical trials, with nearly 2,400 participants, published between 1982 and 2022. Participants… read on > read on >

Americans with COVID-19 have been taking Paxlovid since it was approved under emergency use in late 2021. Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the drug. This approval will allow drugmaker Pfizer to sell the medication at market rate once government supplies are used up. Paxlovid is the fourth antiviral drug and first pill approved by the FDA to treat COVID. It’s meant to keep at-risk adults from progressing to severe COVID symptoms, including hospitalization and death. “Today’s approval demonstrates that Paxlovid has met the agency’s rigorous standards for safety and effectiveness, and that it remains an important treatment option for people at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including those with prior immunity,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. The approval was made using results from the randomized EPIC-HR clinical trial. That trial studied adults who had a lab-confirmed COVID infection and symptoms but were not hospitalized. They each had a risk factor for severe disease, such as obesity or diabetes, or were 60 years and older. These patients had not received a COVID vaccine or been infected before. The study found that Paxlovid reduced odds of hospitalization or death by 86% compared to those given a placebo within five days of symptom onset. The patients… read on > read on >

You’ve heard of eating your spinach to stay strong, but how about loading up on your flavonols? New research suggests that plant-based foods rich in these important dietary compounds could lower your chances of developing frailty as you age. Apples and blackberries are among the fruits that contain a particular flavonoid called quercetin that may be the most important to prevent frailty, the investigators added. “There may be some validity to the old saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor [or frailty] away,” said a team that included Steven Oei, from the department of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. “Our findings suggest that for every 10 mg [milligrams] higher intake of flavonols per day, the odds of frailty were reduced by 20%. Individuals can easily consume 10 mg of flavonols intake per day since one medium-sized apple has about 10 mg of flavonols.” About 10% to 15% of older adults experience frailty. This geriatric syndrome leads to a greater risk of falls, fractures, disability, hospitalization and death. Dietary recommendations to prevent frailty typically focus on eating protein, but many other foods have health benefits, the study authors reported. “Although there was no significant association between total flavonoid intake and frailty, higher flavonols intake (one of the subclasses of flavonoids) was associated with lower odds of developing frailty,” according to study… read on > read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a second nasal spray for reversing an opioid overdose. To be sold as Opvee, the spray contains the medication nalmefene hydrochloride and will be available to Americans aged 12 and older with a prescription, the FDA said. “The agency continues to advance the FDA Overdose Prevention Framework and take actionable steps that encourage harm reduction by supporting the development of novel overdose reversal products,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in an agency news release. “On the heels of the FDA’s recent approval of the first over-the-counter opioid reversal agent [Narcan], the availability of nalmefene nasal spray places a new prescription opioid reversal option in the hands of communities, harm reduction groups and emergency responders,” Califf added. Indivior, which will make and sell Opvee going forward, said the spray should be available by October. Indivior bought Opiant Pharmaceuticals, which developed Opvee, in March. “Opvee’s FDA approval represents a significant achievement in the development of new treatment options to address today’s era of opioid overdoses that are driven by powerful synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl,” Indivior CEO Mark Crossley said in a company news release. “Opvee is an emergency treatment for the fast reversal of respiratory depression triggered by natural or synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, and we are committed to making this novel rescue medication widely available… read on > read on >

Maybe you can’t weed your garden without sneezing. Perhaps your eyes start watering when you clean your home. Did your skin begin itching last night during dinner? You may have an allergy, but you’re not alone. More than 50 million adults and children in the United States have a bad reaction to pollen, dust, mold, pet dander and other common allergens, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology (ACAAI). What are allergies (allergic reactions)? An allergy is your body’s reaction to an allergen such as pollen, mold and more. Pollen causes a pollen allergy and mold causes a mold allergy. It’s your immune system that reacts. It is very important because it protects you from germs and viruses, but sometimes it gets confused. “Most people don’t have an immune response to pollen, but a certain percentage of people’s immune systems see it as foreign and dangerous, and they treat it like a pathogen or infection,” said Dr. Christina Price, an allergist and immunologist at Yale Medicine in New Haven, Conn. How your body treats allergens When your immune system decides that something might hurt you, it fights back. This fight triggers those miserable symptoms like shortness of breath, hives, sneezing and itching, the ACAAI explains. In other words, while trying to protect you, your body accidentally causes harm. The most common allergy… read on > read on >

Patients with Crohn’s disease have a new treatment option, following U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of a pill called Rinvoq (upadacitinib). Rinvoq is meant to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease who have not had success with TNF (tumor necrosis factor) blockers. The daily pill is the first oral treatment for this group of patients. Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease. It causes inflammation in any part of the digestive tract, typically affecting the small intestine and the beginning of the large intestine. Common symptoms include diarrhea, cramping, stomach pain and weight loss. The medication was previously approved for several other conditions, including eczema, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and ulcerative colitis, according to the website of pharmaceutical company AbbVie. Researchers evaluated its safety and effectiveness in two randomized trials in 857 patients with the disease. Participants received either 45 mg of Rinvoq or a placebo daily for 12 weeks. More patients treated with the medication achieved remission than those treated with the placebo, the FDA said in a news release. Also, more people treated with the medication had improvement in intestinal inflammation, which was assessed with a colonoscopy. The FDA also assessed Rinvoq as a maintenance treatment, evaluating 343 patients who had responded to the 12 weeks of medication. This group received 15 mg or 30 mg once daily or… read on > read on >

It’s well known that it’s unhealthy to have belly fat accumulating around your abdominal organs, but there’s a more insidious form of fat that could be even more hazardous to your health, a new study says. Fat that infiltrates your muscles appears to dramatically increase your risk of death, according to findings published May 16 in the journal Radiology. Fatty muscle — a condition called myosteatosis — was associated with a 15.5% increase in absolute risk of death in a group of healthy adults, researchers found. By comparison, obesity appeared to increase participants’ absolute mortality risk by only 7.6%, results show. Fatty liver disease raised risk by 8.5% and muscle wasting by 9.7%. “The signal [for muscle fat risk] was so much stronger for this otherwise healthy cohort,” said senior researcher Dr. Perry Pickhardt, chief of gastrointestinal imaging at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It really stood out as a strong biomarker beyond the things I think we all accept as important measures. “I think there’s going to be profiling of patients where if you line up myosteatosis with a very fatty liver or maybe abundant visceral fat, you might be a lot worse off than if you just had one of those or two of those,” Pickhardt added. Muscle fat has been a subject of increasing interest in the… read on > read on >

Men, want to burn fat? Chill out. New research shows that exposure to cold in the morning may help you burn more fat than at other times of day. Exposure to cold activates brown fat, producing heat to help the body maintain its temperature and burn calories, especially those from fat. That makes it an ideal way for guys to improve cardiometabolic health — preventable conditions like heart attack, diabetes and liver disease, for instance. Sorry, ladies. The same may not be true for you. “Our study indicates that the optimum time to undergo cold exposure is at a specific point in the body’s 24-hour cycle,” said study co-author Mariëtte Boon, of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “It may also be that there is a sex difference in how the body responds to cold exposure with respect to boosting metabolism at a certain time point, and it appears that delivering cold exposure therapies in the morning may be more beneficial than the evening for men.” The investigators set out to determine whether there was a circadian (time-influenced) rhythm in humans’ brown fat activity, and if there were any differences between men and women. In rodents, brown fat metabolic activity fluctuates throughout the day, peaking just before waking up, the study authors noted. Heat production from food digestion and activity declines at night. Waking… read on > read on >

Skip artificial sweeteners if you’re trying to lose weight, warns the World Health Organization (WHO), noting the sugar substitutes aren’t effective for shedding pounds and may also cause harm. Long-term use of sugar substitutes may cause “potential undesirable effects,” according to new WHO guidance. This can include an “increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and mortality in adults,” CBS News reported. Consuming foods and beverages with ingredients like saccharin or sucralose or adding them to foods “does not confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children,” the WHO said after completing a systematic review. Among the artificial sweeteners WHO officials considered were acesulfame K, aspartame, advantame, cyclamates, neotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia and stevia derivatives, according to the news report. “People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages,” said Francesco Branca, WHO director for nutrition and food safety. Artificial sweeteners “are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health,” Branca added. These recommendations do not apply to people who already have diabetes, according to the review. That group was not included in the review. This isn’t the only time these artificial sweeteners have raised… read on > read on >

Vegan moms can breastfeed their children and not worry that their breast milk is missing essential nutrients, a new study finds. Researchers from Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands tested the milk of vegan mothers, finding it contains sufficient levels of vitamin B2 and carnitine. “The maternal diet greatly influences the nutritional composition of human milk, which is important for child development. With the rise of vegan diets worldwide, also by lactating mothers, there are concerns about the nutritional adequacy of their milk,” said lead researcher Dr. Hannah Juncker. “Therefore, it would be important to know if the milk concentrations of those nutrients are different in lactating women consuming a vegan diet,” she added in a medical center news release. Vegan diets are limited to plant-based foods. This type of eating includes fruits, vegetables, legumes, soy, nuts and nut butters but no animal-sourced foods. Although vitamin B2 and carnitine are found in highest concentrations in animal products, they were not missing in vegan moms’ breast milk, challenging assumptions that breastfed infants of these mothers may be deficient in these nutrients. The study used a technique that separates a sample into its individual parts and analyzes the mass of these parts. Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) is important for enzymes involved in many biological pathways. A shortage can lead to anemia and neurological problems in infants, the… read on > read on >